FAE has been quietly using they/them pronouns for years now, without getting much attention. And dressing in more feminine garb on more occasions. And, on the explicit word that nonbinary people were welcome in the women's tournaments, started playing in them in October. Which retroactively made all the pinball play they'd done in open leagues and tournaments count them towards the women's finals. FAE plays only in Lansing, plus Pinball At The Zoo this last year. This meant they were both unknown and under-rated: consider that they got into the top eight of women in the state on the strength of two league finishes and a couple not-large tournaments, plus a mid-pack finish in Pinball At The Zoo. FAE was my and ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger's pick for person most likely to win it all, and nobody but us seemed aware of them.
And our forecast looked likely to pay off: they beat their first-round opponent in four straight games, and their second-round in five games. KEC was next and would put FAE to the strongest test they faced all day. But KEC beat FAE on Mustang (her choice), then FAE returned the favor on Lethal Weapon 3. On The Who's Tommy and then Uncanny X-Men FAE racked up two more wins, bringing KEC to the brink of elimination. Then on Scuba --- her pick --- she came back and handed FAE a second loss that round. On to FAE's last pick, Paragon.
Paragon is a game I want to like. It's a wide-body, usually a sign of so much good pinball idea they couldn't place it all. It's got a neat bunch of art this time I don't think plagiarized from Boris Vallejo. But it is a brutal game, prone to sudden, abrupt ball drains. Even the tutorial video the IFPA has shows the skilled player teaching you how to play the game unable to keep the ball alive.
And, somehow, FAE was keeping the ball alive, accomplishing such impossible feats as spelling out the word PARAGON in the lights, a feat good for like 80,000 points on a table where 50,000 will give you a good finish most of the time. KEC went up to her last ball down something like 150,000 points and the game just does not let you get that many points.
Yet ... somehow ... she didn't lose the ball. She just kept on shooting it up into as safe a shot as Paragon has, putting up small but reliable points over and over, the wood-chopping approach that will win you games if you don't have an unlucky shot. And she kept having lucky shots, right up to the point that she too completed the PARAGON spelling, all but eliminating FAE's lead. A little bit more play and she would bring this expert player to a seventh game, that would be KEC's pick.
She didn't. The ball bounced off a something or other and drained and when the bonus counted up she was just short. One more hit on the bonus-multiplier targets would have won it. One or two more shots up into the upper playfield where bonuses build up and letters get awarded would have done it. It would have been plausible that she'd have gone on to finals, but she did not. All she had was the strange consolation that everyone in the venue was congratulating her for an incredible rally and agreeing that it sucked it wasn't enough.
And finals. FAE versus two-time women's champion JL. The match started on her game, Jungle Queen, which decided it wanted nothing to do with her and gave FAE a win. Lethal Weapon 3 was similarly not giving JL nearly enough time to play. The next game, Space Shuttle, got interrupted on JL's last ball when, down a hundred thousand points or something, the spinner that's essential to any wood-chopping play got stuck. PH was able to open the table and fix it easily, but what flow JL had started gathering was gone and she drained the next shot. Finally, playing demoralized, FAE crushed JL on The Uncanny X-Men, beating the former state champion four games to nothing.
FAE had come from obscurity to win it all, and they never faced a closer match than KEC with her outstanding-but-not-enough Paragon.
And now, back to Tuscora Park. We'll get to carousel fun soon.
Something delights me in seeing the train wriggle its way back along the track here.
Maker's plate for the Superior Wheel.
And the ride sign for the roller coaster, which --- to my surprise --- I don't think we have any photographs of from up-close. No recent photographs anyway.
Several plaques dedicating the carousel and its building.
bunnyhugger enjoying a ride on the carousel. I had a feeling this was a ride it was okay to take a careful picture or two on.
I guess bunnyhugger did not think it was all right I was taking pictures during the ride. Sorry.
Trivia: Challenger astronaut Ronald McNair hoped to bring a saxophone into space on STS-51L, to play with electronic musician Jean-Michel Jarre (on the ground) a composition Jarre had composed, ``Rendez-Vous VI''. He was blocked from bringing the instrument to space, on the grounds of objections from ``someone in the chain of command''. Commander Dick Scobee would say it was his call: ``I decided Ron could bring his sax if Judy [ Resnik ] could bring her piano.'' Source: Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, Adam Higginbotham. McNair had played his saxophone in space before, on STS-41B (also the Challenger), but accidentally recorded over the tape of his performance before landing.
Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 81: Steam Rocket to Infinity, Ralph Stein, Bill Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.
PS: What's Going On In Prince Valiant? Why is Prince Valiant in Italy now? November 2025 - January 2026 in case you missed my comic strip recaps sooner.
